PhD defence

Computerized Adaptive Testing in Dutch Mental Health Care

• G. Flens

Date

Wednesday 5 October 2022

Time

11:15 - 12:00 hour

Address

Academy Building
Rapenburg 73
2311 GJ Leiden

This thesis aimed to lay the foundation for a new set of Dutch mental health instruments to measure depression and anxiety in an efficient, reliable, valid, and responsive manner. More specifically, the Dutch-Flemish PROMIS adult v1.0 item banks for Depression and Anxiety were psychometrically evaluated for computerized adaptive test (CAT) administration in the Dutch clinical and general population.

CAT is a modern methodology that can be used to develop instruments that measure both efficiently and reliably as only the most appropriate questions are administered, and assessment terminates as soon as sufficient reliability is achieved. For the PROMIS CAT instruments, this was demonstrated in the thesis: measuring depression and anxiety in Dutch persons was highly efficient and reliable.

Moreover, the CAT instruments were shown to measure depression and anxiety sufficiently responsive and valid as well. This even includes longitudinal validity, which has barely been studied for other Dutch mental health instruments.

Overall, it was concluded that the new instruments are an improvement over available instruments. Therefore, using the PROMIS CAT instruments in clinical practice may lead to more efficient and reliable measurement that supports professionals and patients in evaluating patients' treatment. 

Supervisor(s)

• Prof. E. de Beurs
• Prof. P. Spinhoven

PhD dissertations

Approximately one week after the defence, PhD dissertations by Leiden PhD students are available digitally through the Leiden Repository, that offers free access to these PhD dissertations. Please note that in some cases a dissertation may be under embargo temporarily and access to its full-text version will only be granted later.

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